"Knowing"

I was reflecting on an experience I had back in college the other day. My friend had recently met a guy, they had a myriad of deep “vulnerable” conversations, and now “I know everything about him, and he knows everything about me.” I took this comment in stride, for it was certainly not the first (or last) time I heard it, and something I had assented to a few times myself. After a deep conversation, and revealing things we never thought we would have revealed to another human being, we leave the conversation with a sense of “knowing” and of “being known.” For all of us who have been to this stage, I’m sure this strikes a chord. For those have been to this stage and moved past it, I’m sure you might be laughing right now.

Currently I am in a class entitled “Knowledge Management” which I took out of sheer curiosity onto what that could possible mean. ‘Knowledge Management,” or KM for short, turns out to be learning how to share knowledge that people gain from experience, aka. how to fix copiers, how to build a piece of software, how to interact with certain individuals and corporate entities, etc. Another point of my whole intellectual KM experience, is the fact that knowledge resides deep in the human being, often to such an extent that the person is not even aware that they know it, let alone the people around or who employ them. I’m sure many of us have experienced this, when we encounter a situation and deep from the recesses of our brain appears “Oh yeah, there was this one time....” We have depths of accumulated experiences residing in us, just waiting for a moment where they will be needed. That is to say, not even we know our own full potential and can fully embody every aspect or ourselves- from our thoughts to our actions. Only through challenges and experiences do we have a chance to discover ourselves for ourselves. On the same token, only through mutual experiences with others, can we build a base of shared knowledge – where we begin to know what that person knows, often discovering both ourselves and the other at the same exact time.

That said, let’s revisit the above statement made during college. Often we feel we understand ourselves and others-particularly the attractive person sitting across from us over coffee- and bring the above statement into question. It has however inherently two misleading assumptions: 1. I know everything about myself and 2. S/he knows everything about themselves and 3. We are both capable of communicating all this knowledge and experience through explicit conversation- once exchanged, we now know all we need to know.

I am not trying to undervalue the importance of these types of communications and conversations, they are necessary and do communicate a lot of needed information. The danger however lies when we stop there, when we fall under the fallacy that our own growing and development stops there, and that the developing knowing of the other has also commenced.

What I am considering is changing my view of a person, from a person as a relatively stagnant and stable entity, to rather a being who is continually growing in both internal resources and external experiences. Knowing a person then become more of an adventures – as new challenges are faced, as the unexpected comes, and as memories are made to we truly begin to know the other person, even as we are already truly known. In this way, we can also come to know ourselves

Sara is trying to make a comeback to blogging. Thanks Bethany and Page!